The Most Dangerous Sin

Well, we're coming up on those Spring Holy Days, and it's hard to believe that it's only a couple of weeks away. Now, we're going to be getting ready to take all the leavening out of our homes. This week, I had to go buy another car because last week the motor went out of my car. It had over 200,000 miles, and I was going to push it as... I tend to push things as far as they could go, and it wouldn't go anymore. So when you take it into... they get it fixed to two different places. They both say, just buy another car. You know, it's not worth fixing. So I have this... it's new for me. It's a used car, and it's great. I went out and I looked at it. It's all been cleaned as long as I don't eat in it. Now, I still have my old car if someone would like to buy my sin. Because if not, I'm going to have to clean that one out. But we'll be cleaning out our cars, our homes, taking out all that leavening. And of course, really, that physical ritual isn't meaningful at all if we don't understand the spiritual reasons behind it. We are to do those things, but of themselves, they are there to teach us something. That is about sin. As we take out that leavening, we take out a symbol of sin. Sin that we are struggling to still overcome. Sin that has been removed from our lives. I mean, this isn't a time to go back through our lives and try to repent again of all of our sins. You've repented of your sins. It is a time to take stock of where your life is now, look at what God has done for you, and look where He's taken you. And where you do have positive aspects in your life where God has helped you overcome sin. And you are moving forward. And it's time to look at where we still have to go and how much we still have to overcome. Now, in this context, I'd like to ask you a question to think about. What do you think is the most difficult sin to overcome? Because that's interesting. Over the years I've had that conversation with people. What is the most difficult sin to overcome? I can remember a man telling me one time that he believed that homosexuals could not overcome that sin. Now, once they committed that sin, they were trapped and they were all going to the lake of fire. Now, the Bible doesn't teach that. How about other people say, well, alcoholism. That's one thing people really can't kick. They just stay drunk for the rest of their lives. Well, that's not true. I've met a lot of alcoholics who have overcome drinking. So what it is, what is it? What would you say? Well, there's a sin that is the most dangerous. It is the most difficult to overcome. I want to talk about a sin that is the most dangerous of all sins. Because it is a sin that is the most difficult to overcome.

But it's not what most of us would think. Because actually it is the most common sin. And it is a sin that you and I need to think about at this time of year. Now, before I go into it and talk about this sin, first let me define something that will help us understand it. And that is, when we look at the Scripture, the Bible talks about God's character and it talks about His righteousness.

So what does the Bible mean when it talks about God's righteousness? Now, the word righteousness just means basically being right. Just being right. Although when you see it, especially in the Old Testament, it is many times applied to justice. In other words, what is being done is right in accordance with law. It's the right thing to do. It's the right judgment. When we look at righteousness when it applies to God, many times it has to do with His moral judgment. He is righteous. He is right in His judgment.

His character is consistent. In fact, righteousness is actually an aspect of God's character. His judgment, His moral beliefs, He is right in. And His actions and His beliefs are consistent. God is not divided. God is not divided in any way. So He is right, and His actions are right. His actions always follow His judgments. So righteousness has to do with moral character and God's moral character, that His actions are always consistent. There is a consistency between what God believes, if you will, and what He does.

They are always consistent. Which is not true with human beings. You will also see righteousness used to apply to God's faithfulness, especially when it talks about covenant. The covenants God makes with people. You'll see where God will say, I don't do this because of your righteousness, I do this because of my righteousness. I am faithful. And over and over again you'll see God talk about, in the Scripture where I promised this to Abraham. Abraham's dead. You, his descendants, aren't doing what you're supposed to do.

But I will do this anyway. And his righteousness has to do with his faithful. When God says something, He will do it. He's consistent always with His honesty. When He says something, He's going to do it. Basically, you will also see that righteousness has to do with justice, rightness, and goodness. And He'll describe, or the Bible describes righteousness, our righteousness, is that God describes how relationships work.

We are righteous, or we perform righteousness, when we are just and right and good towards God, in the way that He defines us. And righteousness has to do with how we interact with other people. You will see it used in terms of righteousness. This man acted righteously towards this person. And the reason why it'll use that term that way is because that means that person acted in a just way, or a good way, or a right way, in accordance the way God wants it done. So God's righteousness has to do with being just, being right, and being good.

So God's righteousness is very simple. He's always just. In other words, whatever He does is always consistent with His moral character. He's always right, and He's always good. That's God's righteousness. Now, the Bible describes human beings in different terms. Ever since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, we have a corrupted human nature. You and I sin. So that we are not righteous. We're a mixture of justice. Using what we want is we want justice when somebody does something bad to us.

We want mercy when we were the one at fault. Boy, that person did this to me. I want them to pay. And then we can't figure out why people just don't forgive us when we were wrong.

When it comes to goodness, it's the same thing. We want people to treat us with goodness. We don't necessarily want to treat everybody else with goodness because it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to treat other people righteously the way God tells us to. And when it comes to righteousness being that God is right, well, we have no problem with that one because we know we're right all the time.

And human beings aren't right all the time. In fact, we're wrong most of the time in terms of God's righteousness. So we have a problem. The word righteousness is the exact opposite when we talk in terms of God's righteousness to who we are as human beings. And the Apostle Paul sums it all up in one sentence. I'm just going to read this sentence from Romans. I read this at the sermon. It was actually foundational to the sermon that I gave last week in Lebanon where in Romans 8-7 Paul says, The carnal mind is enmity against God, or is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

We believe and we feel. This is very important. This has to do with feelings. We feel that we are right. We feel that we are good. And we feel that we are just. Now God defines what it is to be right, just, and good. And we feel that we are right and just and good. In fact, if we don't... We're designed to seek righteousness. If we don't have a standard of righteousness, we'll make it up. We'll make up standards.

As I keep telling my wife, I said, you don't understand. The person who supports abortion, you find appalling because they support the murder of a child. And you feel incredibly emotional about that, which I do too. Excuse me. And frustrated and angry. How could this person be so immoral? Now, you know what they feel? That abortion is a basic human right.

They feel the same level of frustration and anger towards you. How could you be so immoral to restrict a human right? What are you, a Nazi? They feel just as strongly as we feel. Because human beings feel that we are right and just and good. They define that as goodness. By not supporting abortion, you're not a good person. You're a bad person. They can't figure out why you're so bad. What would cause you to be that bad? Just like we're saying, what would cause a person to kill a baby?

What would cause them to be that bad? They're asking the same question about you. So the whole idea of righteousness is a very complex problem. You and it is—now, think about it. You all know the answer to this. I have God's righteousness, and I, as a human being, naturally feel a need to feel right and good and just. That's called self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is the most dangerous of all sin.

You say, why? How could that be more dangerous than, you know, I'm not out here, I'm not a pimp, I'm not murdering people. Well, those are all dangerous sins. All sin is dangerous.

But why is this one so dangerous? Because it's an attitude, not necessarily an action. So it's a lot harder to diagnose. And if you are self-righteous, you know you are right, and therefore you have no need to repent. If someone commits murder, they can repent before God. David did and was forgiven. Well, that's the worst thing you could do, is take someone's life. God forgave David. What if David would have refused to repent? What if David would have decided he was right in what he did?

Now he ends up cut off from God. Not because of the murder. I mean, that would have cut him off, but he still had the opportunity to move back into relationship with God. But once he decided, if he would have, what I did was right, he had no way to move back into relationship with God. The self-righteousness would have destroyed him. It is the most dangerous of all sins. The whole world is self-righteous. But here's our problem.

You and I have been given all this truth from God. We've been given God's Spirit. We've been given help. We've been given a congregation. We have been given so much that it's easy for us to be self-righteous and not see it. See, I can see the sins of other people.

I can see where abortion is wrong, and I can make a stand against it. And you should. But what about our own self-righteousness? It's interesting. We're entering into the days of 11 bread. There are two ways to leaven something. One is to take dough and put a leavening agent in it.

And when you do, it puffs up. You know, there's another way to leaven bread. Just let it sit out. It'll collect spores in the air, and it'll leaven itself. A lot more subtle way of leavening. See, if you didn't know that, you could set out some dough, go back later, and say, what happened to my dough? Well, self-righteousness is that more subtle type of leavening. It comes into us, and we don't even know it. What I want to do today is I want to look at four symptoms of self-righteousness. And all of us need to be examining ourselves during this time period, coming up to the Passover. See if this is an aspect of who we are. And this is tough. Doing what I'm going to talk about today may be the toughest thing you ever do. We have to look at it at times ourselves and say, am I substituting God's righteousness or self-righteousness?

And the problem is, our immediate answer would be, no. So we have to at least ask the question, maybe I have. Maybe I am. The first symptom, and I'm going to call these syndromes, the first one is, I would never have Bugg's syndrome. Now, have you ever gone over to somebody's house and they... You're sitting there eating and you look out into the kitchen and you see a big bug go across the floor. So on the way home, somebody in the family says, did you see the big bug that was in their house?

I'm so glad we don't have bugs. They must not have a clean house. When Kim and I have been married about eight years, we moved to East Texas. You think you know what roaches are. They have the little roaches that swarm in tens of thousands of them. You can literally tear out a wall and the wall will be moving inside. They have big ones. The first time I saw one, I thought it was a bird.

I thought there was a bat in the house. We had to kill this thing and knock it down and it's a roach. Well, we moved to this apartment complex.

Before long, we found out we had roaches. We had bugs. Well, we kept a clean house. We never had bugs. We had a baby. We made sure everything was clean. There was roaches here. So we went down to the management and they said, oh, yeah, we'll take care of it. So they come into our section of the apartment complex and they spray everything, which wasn't healthy for us. I can't believe they just came into our apartment and sprayed everything. Sprayed all over. Sprayed every apartment. And sure enough, of course we were sick for a couple of days, but after a couple of days of being sick, all the roaches were gone.

Now, it should have told us something that there were only a few dead ones. So they moved on to the next segment, to the next segment, to the next section, next segment, next segment. By the time they got around to the last section, we now have these barbarian hordes of roaches coming into our section. There's three times more than there were before because they didn't kill all of them. They just migrated throughout the entire apartment complex and ended up back in our place. So the management solution was, okay, we'll kill them again. And so we just lived this round robin of chasing tens of thousands of roaches around.

We thought we didn't have bugs, but after six months we had to move. One day I'm drinking my coffee in the morning and ended up with a roach in my mouth, you know, and it's like... Yeah, we're moving out of here, okay? As soon as that lease is up, we're out of here. We had bugs! Now, Kim said, why do you tell that story? I hate that story. So as long ago, we could forget it, you know. Now, the point is that it'd been easy to come over our apartment at some point in there and say, these people must be the dirtiest people in the world.

I'm so glad we don't have bugs. Now, this is an approach to life. Self-righteousness exhibits itself in looking at everybody else's bugs. You see everybody else's faults, everybody else's problems, and you just look at everybody else and say, wow, this person has that problem, this person has that problem, this person has that problem, this person has that problem. You know, one of the most defining explanations of self-righteousness in the entire Bible is in Luke 18.

Let's go to Luke 18. Now, what I find very interesting about Luke 18 is that Luke wasn't there when Jesus gave this parable. Remember, Luke gathered this information from people who were there, who saw these things, and he wrote it down. And so what I really find interesting is he gives a little bit of commentary before he tells the parable. Luke says, this is why Jesus did this. And in it he tells us something very important.

Luke 18 verse 9. And he spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. Now, this is at the heart and core of self-righteousness. One, we trust in ourselves that we are righteous.

We trust it. I am right. I am just. I am good. And I will stand on my righteousness. I will stand on my goodness. I will stand on my rightness and my justice. And because of that, when we take that attitude, we automatically look at everybody else as inferior. And we despise other people. We look down on other people. We sort of see this. There's like a hierarchy in the universe in which there's God and Christ, and then us, and then everybody else. You know, me and God, we're like this. The rest of you, boy, you're just not, you don't understand like I do. You don't get it like I do. Now, we don't say that. But here's the problem with self-righteousness. Much of it is a feeling. It's an emotion. We truly feel we are better. We have more goodness, more righteousness. And so in that we despise others. So let's go through what Jesus said.

Two men went up to the temple to pray. When a Pharisee and the other tax collector, he selects these two people carefully in this parable. Pharisee would have been one of the most looked up two men in all of Judaism. The Pharisees formed because after the Babylonian captivity, they decided never again, never again will God have to punish our nation. We are the defenders of the law. We are the defenders of the Ten Commandments. We are the defenders of the Torah. And we will defend it at all costs. And we will even create ceremonies to make sure that it's protected and defended. They would die for the law of God.

The Pharisees kept the letter of the law at a remarkable level.

Now, they didn't understand the spirit of the law. They kept the letter of the law at a remarkable level.

Actually, you and I would have probably felt sort of comfortable with the Pharisees.

So dedicated.

So serious.

And then there's the tax collector.

Now, the tax collector is a collaborator with the Romans.

How despised! What a useless person! He collects taxes for the Romans.

What's interesting is, throughout the empire, there were people who made a lot of money as tax collectors because they skipped off the top. But they couldn't find enough crooks to be tax collectors.

In some places, the Romans would go in and draft people, make them tax collectors, and they had to be a tax collector the rest of their lives.

Because once you were a tax collector, you had no friends.

Everybody, you know, you're working for the Romans, they wanted nothing to do with you.

So you have the opposite ends of the spiritual scale here.

But I want you to understand one thing.

Both of them are Torah-observant Jews in the temple.

This isn't a pagan.

The tax collector is not a pagan.

And he's never accused here by the Pharisee as being a pagan.

He's not accused of being a lawbreaker.

He's accused of something else.

He's a Torah-observant Jews in the temple.

One being more Torah-observant than the other, admittedly so.

Let's go on.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. This is very interesting, with himself. It's an odd phrase.

It's hard to even understand what it means in Greek. It seems to mean, basically, he was talking to himself. He thought he was praying, but he was talking to himself.

So he praised thus with himself.

God, I thank you that I am not like other men.

Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as his tax collector.

He didn't say that the tax collector was an adulterer, by the way.

He did say he was an extortioner.

He said, I'm glad I'm not those things, and I'm sure glad I'm not a tax collector, collaborating with the Romans.

There is nothing in here that says that the tax collector was an adulterer. There's nothing that says he was an extortioner.

He was a tax collector. The most despised job you could have.

But he doesn't accuse him of those things. He just says he collects tax for the beast power.

That's about as bad as you get in his mind.

He says, I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I possess. There is nothing here to disprove that that isn't true. That is true.

If this is a parable, but there were lots of Pharisees who fasted twice a week. They were commanded to do that. They did it because they wanted to be close to God.

They paid tithes over and above what they were supposed to.

This man, this Pharisee, would have never not kept the Sabbath.

He kept the Sabbath.

He kept the Sabbath much more strictly than you and I do.

This man would have kept all the Holy days. This man would have never worshiped them.

This man would have never worshiped any God but Yahweh.

He probably never committed the act of adultery.

He never murdered anybody.

Like I said, we would have probably admired him if we knew him.

And it says, And the tax collector, standing afar off, but not so much as raised his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

The Pharisee came to God before the righteous God and said, I'm righteous too.

The tax collector came and said, Before you I'm bankrupt.

I have nothing to offer.

I have nothing to give you because before you I'm nothing.

What is it that Jesus says?

I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The point he makes is, justifies means that his account was made zero before God.

He now could enter into the presence of God. His prayer was heard.

Now that's very interesting.

And you think about it, if God was looking at the account book of the Pharisee and the account book of the tax collector, I'm sure the tax collector's sins were a whole lot more than the Pharisee's.

They're both Torah observant.

They're both standing in the temple, and the one gets his account erased, and the other does not.

Why?

Self-righteousness.

He could not repent.

He didn't have anything to repent of.

He was right.

And he did do all those things.

But his attitude was wrong.

So it's not just about behavior.

Sin has to do with attitude. See why he said there's a more subtle way to leaven something?

You want to see the leavening agent, I'm going to take a whole thing of yeast and rip the top off, pour it in the bread, used to watch my mom do it all the time.

You know, knead that stuff, and it puffs up.

But to sit the dough out, where does that leavening come from? You don't even know it's there.

And this is what self-righteousness does. You know, if you want to know if you have the...

I would never have Bung Syndrome.

If you want to know if you have it or not, here's what you can do. But this is hard.

Take Psalm 19, 12-13, and go read that to God, and ask God to reveal that in your life.

If you really want to do that. Psalm 19, 12-13 basically says that you go to God. It's what David did. It said, Show me my willful sins, my presumptuous sins.

The sins I'm just doing because I like doing them.

And then show me the sins that I don't know.

You're actually asking God to reveal your sins to you. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing is examining ourselves. But you go pray that, and you may find it a bit overwhelming.

I'm an expert on all these, by the way.

I've had all these syndromes at one time or another. In fact, I've thought about it. I probably had all four of them at one time, at one time or another.

So I understand.

Go ask God that. Second Syndrome. The I'm Okay, You're Okay Syndrome. Now, this one seems like the opposite of, I don't have any bugs.

You have bugs, I don't have bugs. But this isn't the opposite in its attitude. It's just the opposite in the way it's expressed.

The I'm Okay, You're Okay Syndrome basically says, Look, that's really not good, but I can't judge you on that.

I can't judge. Now, there's things we're not supposed to judge, but this takes it to a farther point. It's like, you know what? I'm too good to judge that.

I stand before God, and you stand before God, and what can I say?

I can't always judge everybody.

And this, of course, is the self-righteous attitude of much of society today. Nobody can judge anybody.

But see, what this does is this exchanges the I don't have bugs syndrome, which is, not only do I judge everybody by God's standards, and I pass a sentence on them, which God doesn't allow us to do, but I also judge them by my standards. You have to meet my standards to be righteous. This one basically wipes out all standards.

So the I don't have bugs is looking down on everybody because you don't meet my standards, or you sinned.

So therefore, I want nothing to do with you, or you're condemned. To the other extreme that says, oh, well, you know, we're sort of all in this together, and we like this person because they just accept this as the way we are.

But there's a problem with that in Christianity. Let me look at a situation where Paul had to deal with this. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 5.

1 Corinthians 5 and the first eight verses are interesting because usually we break this up into two parts.

Part of this we read in sermons when we're trying to make a particular point.

And then the last few verses we read during the days of 11 bread. But in the letter itself, in this context, it's all one discussion. So I don't want to break them up. I want to look at it together. I can say usually we break this into two parts in terms of sermons. You'll see the first few verses used to make a point, then in another sermon the next few verses make a point. Let's put them all together and look at it.

Verse 1. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality is not even named among the Gentiles. The man has his father's wife.

The fact that it says his father's wife and not your mother, or I mean his father's wife. The way that's stated would mean his stepmother. And the fact that she's not mentioned as someone who needs to be corrected means she's probably a pagan. She's not part of it. She wouldn't be Jewish and she would be a Christian, so she has to be a pagan. So what we have here is a man who is committing adultery with his stepmother, who's not in the church, but he's in the church.

So that gives us our context here. And the congregation is accepting it. Now that doesn't mean they all accept it as right. They're not walking around saying, oh, that's okay. What they're saying is that, you know, he'll just have to learn. And we want to love him. So we don't, you know, he's having a hard time. So we don't want to do anything to make him feel like we're judging him. We sure don't even feel like he's judged by us.

Now understand, he's committing adultery with his stepmother, who's a pagan, and the entire congregation knows about it. Now how do you explain that to your teenagers? Imagine what's happening in this congregation as this is going on, and it's publicly known, so public that Paul writes a letter. He's not even there. And he writes them, mentions this in the letter. He says, look at this next statement.

He's not talking about the man here that's committing the adultery. He says, and you are what? Puffed up. You're full of leavening. You're full of leavening, but there are the ones that's not committing the overt act of sin. No, but their attitude towards it is wrong. You are puffed up and have rather not borne.

He says, you should be sad. You should be devastated for what's happening in your congregation. That he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. Boy, that sounds hard today, doesn't it? Oh, surely you don't go to a church that someone was committing adultery with their stepmother, that you would say they have to be taken out of the church?

Whose righteousness do we judge things by? Ours? Or God? Is it self-righteousness or God's righteousness? Paul talks about what they should do. Verse 3, Now, it's interesting how they struggled with this. Because you get the 2 Corinthians, the man repented, they didn't want to put him out because they were puffed up. They felt good about themselves. You see? They felt just. See how merciful we are. They felt right. We're doing the right thing by not judging him. They felt good. You feel good about yourself for being so righteous about this, so caring about this.

You get the 2 Corinthians, the man repented, they weren't letting him back in. Just say, wait a minute. He didn't sit against you. He said against God. If God's forgiven him, you're supposed to bring him back. He's part of your congregation. What do you mean? You won't let him come back. He's repented. He's supposed to be accepted back now. So they were having a hard time with this because they were puffed up.

Now, verse 6 is where we usually, see that's usually where we read the stories where we stop. Verse 6. You're glorying. The fact that you feel so good about this is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you are truly unleavened. He talks about in the next verse that Jesus is the Passover and then commands them to keep the feast. So this whole discussion of this man who's committing adultery with his stepmother and that they were puffed up about it and were glorying, they felt good about their decision, is discussed in the context of the Passover in the Days of Unleavened Bread.

That you know what? You don't understand the feast of unleavened bread in order to have this happening in your congregation. We shouldn't separate those two events. I mean it's okay sometimes to cut them in half to make a point, but I mean to really get the power of what's being said here, we need to put them together. You people, he said to these people, you people do not understand the days of unleavened bread because you're allowing this to happen and you're all puffed up about it.

You're full of leavening because you let this little leaven in, you have lots of leavening in your church. I'm okay, you're okay, syndrome. We're okay. God loves us. We're not all okay. So this shows us that there are times when we must face, or have another person face their sin, as we must be willing to face our own. Now, the third, there's four of these, the third symptom or syndrome I call the Rabbi-Rabbi syndrome. Rabbi-Rabbi syndrome. Now, this brand of self-righteousness exhibits itself, itself, in an obsession to be recognized as a spiritual giant or teacher or leader.

Now, a desire to be a spiritual leader or teacher is not bad. And there are people that are spiritual teachers and spiritual leaders in any congregation. So I want to go back through the definition I just read and emphasize what's really important. This brand of self-righteousness exhibits itself in an obsessive desire to be recognized as a spiritual leader or spiritual teacher. It's obsessive for a need for recognition, okay? An obsessive need for recognition. Certain people are just board leaders.

And if we have a picnic and there's a softball field and you get a guy that's good at softball and he's a board leader, guess what he's going to organize? A softball game, right? That's what he does. Now, I have a teaching personality. I'm a coach. I can't do anything without saying, well, here's what you do, you know? Or asking, say, what do I do?

If I'm not coaching, I want somebody to coach me. I'm just, that's, you know, that's who I am. We all have different personalities. So the desire or the ability to teach or to lead is not the evil, but this obsession with recognition is just another form of self-righteousness. Let's go to Matthew 23. Matthew 23. Once again, we'll pick on the Pharisees a little bit. Then Jesus spoke to the baltitudes and to his disciples, saying, The scribes of the Pharisee sit in Moses' seat. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do.

But do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. In other words, he was saying, there's something hypocritical about the Pharisees. They stand up there and they read from the scrolls, which they would do, you know, every Sabbath or every time they met in the synagogue, and they expound them and they teach about them. And he said, when you're reading from the scroll, do what the scroll says. And when you're reading from Isaiah or when you're reading from Deuteronomy, you do what Deuteronomy says. But don't follow their example. Remember, the Pharisees formed to protect the law.

And so they created layers and layers and layers of laws to protect the real law, until they didn't even keep the layers of laws they created. Now, Judaism became a huge religion of ritual. Verse 4 says, For they bind heavy burdens hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

But all their works, and this is very important in verse 5, because it shows the motivation, but all their works they do to be seen by men, they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. Now, why would they make huge phylacteries on the bottom of their garments? Because the law told them to put phylacteries on the bottom of their garments so they would never forget the law. Who were they? They were the defenders of the law. They wanted everybody to know, I am the defender of the law. Now, you know, in the actual keeping, say, of the Ten Commandments— let's just pick the Ten Commandments— and the keeping of the Ten Commandments, there would have been very little difference between, say, a Pharisee and Mary and Joseph, the mother and stepfather of Jesus.

They kept the Ten Commandments. They were—they observed the law. They were torobservant. But the Pharisees kept expanding it out, expanding it out, expanding it out, to protect the law. To where even Jesus said, in your traditions, to protect the law, you've actually disobeyed the law. You've actually destroyed the spirit of why God said, do this. So it looks like you're keeping it in a letter, but you're destroying the whole intent of the law. Verse 6, they loved the best places at feast, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplace, where they could be called by men, rabbi, rabbi.

This was their motivation. It actually wasn't a motivation to lead, or a motivation to teach, or a motivation to serve. The entire motivation was, I'm better than you, and you need to recognize it. I need to be called master. I need to be called rabbi. It's interesting. I think of the handful of ministers in my life that I've come in contact with that were really mentors to me, and looked up to them.

And how unpresumptuous they were, and how amazing it was to work with them and be taught by them and learn from them and have friendships with them, and they never wanted to be called master. Master is not one of the words that are used for elders in the church, by the way. There's certain authority given to the elders, but they're never called masters. It's important to understand that. The Pharisee needed to be called master. He needed to be called rabbi. His whole ego is dependent. The whole structure of his self-worth and value is, people must see me for the superior being that I am. My goodness, my justice, my rightness, I am right.

We go on a little bit, because now Christ says how to deal with this. He says, but you, were saved. Do not be called rabbi, for one is your teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Once again, if you've got to look at somebody who's your master and your rabbi, let's look at Christ. He says, do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father, he who is in heaven.

And do not be called teacher, for one is your teacher, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And then it repeats what we've already read in one of the other parables we read. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Shall be your servant. Servant is an attitude. Servant is an attitude. It doesn't mean, you know, as a husband, as a father, you are to be a servant to your children. Now that doesn't mean you give up your authority over your children, does it?

But it is an approach to them that you're looking out for their good. You serve their good.

I knew a man one time who really was, this had the rabbi-rabbi syndrome. I was a teenager. And at church, nobody would have talked to him at church, because he would gather around him, whoever he could, and he would see him off in the corner, just talking, lecturing the people about what I discovered in the Bible this week. And he read his Bible on an average three hours a day.

And he would tell people what he had learned, and he would, you know what was really amazing is? The amount of knowledge he had was... It was hard to really discuss anything with him, because he actually had more knowledge than almost anybody. This isn't always about knowledge.

Attitude is important, too. And so he could, you know, quote maybe a whole passage just from Zephaniah, just by verbatim, just came out of his mouth.

As soon as services went over, he'd go out and bite people over his house. After a couple years, nobody wanted to go over his house, because what he did is he went over, he fed you, and then you had to sit there until you fell asleep while he gave a Bible study. My wife and I only went one time.

And we sat there the whole afternoon while he preached to us and told us how the elders of the church, including my own dad, didn't know the Bible like he does. And he knew it, and he had this deep understanding and this secret knowledge, and he had to pass it on. And he would do this, and he needed this recognition, and he was so frustrated because he wasn't recognized as rabbi.

And it just drove him crazy! He eventually left the church. He went to a Sunday church, and he never quite could figure out the story. When I think happened, he went there, convinced a bunch of the people that should keep the Sabbath, blew the church apart, became sort of the leader of the Sabbath group, and then they kicked him out.

I do know, I remember talking to my dad, not too long before the man died. And he said, hey, I saw so-and-so at the doughnut shop having a cup of coffee. I said, well, I haven't heard that name in years. He said, yeah. He said, I didn't recognize him at first. He just looked like a street person.

He hadn't shaved. Obviously, he hadn't showered in days. He was sitting there drinking a cup of coffee. So I walked over and started talking to him. He said, yeah, I don't have any friends. I don't have any congregation. My wife left me. I'm alone. You know why he thought he was alone? Because he was a gifted rabbi, and nobody could see it. That's the ultimate case of the rabbi-rabbi syndrome I've ever seen. He died not long after that. I don't know if there was any family. I really don't know what happened to him. I can just remember my dad said, I tried to talk to him.

I shared a cup of coffee with him. He was grateful. At least somebody was sitting talking to him. Of course, he had slandered my dad on many occasions, but that never bothered him. So, you know, oh well. The guy's got a problem. Here we see that we must be servants. You know, if you're frustrated, if you're frustrated because you can't figure out why everybody doesn't see you as the great spiritual giant you are, if you're frustrated because I don't understand why everybody doesn't see me that way, then here's what I think you should do between now and the next Passover for the next year.

Go visit the widows. Go visit the elderly. Go to nursing homes where there's nobody there that even knows you. And volunteer for a little more. Go be a servant for a while.

You'll probably have a different viewpoint after a year. Go be a servant. You know what Jesus said? Those would be the greatest among you. You'll be a servant. It's the attitude. It's not the function. We believe it's the function. You know, if I could just get to be the head usher, then I'll have a higher position in the kingdom of God. Then if I could get to be the deacon, I would have a higher position in the kingdom of God. I could just be like Andy Luck. And then if I could just be like John Paul Jones.

And then if I could be like Fred Keller's, Christ himself will walk up to me in the kingdom and say, come sit at my right hand. It doesn't work that way. The last point, the last syndrome, and this one, is just common in our society. It's not my fault, syndrome. It's just not my fault. We won't take responsibility. If you could just understand the way my parents treated me, you would understand why I hit my children.

Okay. Let's try to understand how you were abused as a child and help you work through that. But that does not justify abusing your own children. Well, if you understood, you know, this, that, and the other in my life, you would understand this behavior. Okay. That does help me understand the behavior, but it doesn't justify the behavior.

There is something in human beings that believe, my behavior is justified because I'm right, even if the behavior is wrong. In 1931, there was a famous gangster named New York known as Two Gun Crowley. Anybody ever hear of Two Gun Crowley? Okay. Two Gun Crowley was a famous gangster that, I mean, just the man was just a blooded killer.

But he's sitting on his side of the road, kissing his girlfriend, and a policeman walks up and asks to see his license. He pulls out a gun and shoots the policeman, a couple of times. The policeman is laying on the ground.

He then gets the gun out of the policeman's holder and shoots him with his own gun. Gets in his car, drives back to New York City, goes to his girlfriend's apartment like nothing happened. I mean, nothing bothered him. The guy was bugging me, so I killed him.

Well, before long, the apartment house was surrounded by 150 policemen. All of them shooting into that. Everybody's shooting, just blowing the apartment complex or house apart. They estimate there were 10,000 people around watching this. And of course, every once in a while, he'd duck out the window and fire out a few shots and dunk back, you know. And this went on for a while. And then he got wounded. And before they were able to capture him, we know what he was thinking, because he wrote it down. It was a piece of paper, it had blood stains all over it. Let me read to you, if I can find my glasses, what he wrote. He said, to whom it may concern, which I thought that's pretty interesting, to whom it may concern, under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one, one that would do nobody any harm. He believed it. It made him feel good. He was just in his cause. People had no right to bother him. That policeman had no right to bother him. And besides, it wasn't his fault. If people would leave him alone, if you understood, I grew up in poverty, therefore I can steal.

It's not my fault. When they took Crowley off to the electrical chair for all the people he killed, here's what he said, This is what I get for defending myself. You see, he wasn't wrong. When we find ourselves fighting irrationally, that I am right, we always need to take a step back. Even if we are right, we need to step back a minute. Believe me, I've been defending myself at times that I was right. And in my head, this little voice is saying, You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong.

And I'm just ignoring it. Well, my wife stands there and stares at me. And I'm defending my point, knowing I'm wrong. But it's like, then I've got to say I'm wrong. Maybe you haven't done that. You're a better person than I am. It's just not my fault. We won't take responsibility. This quote is one of my favorite quotes on this subject. This man said, I have spent... Well, I won't tell you who it is until after I say it.

I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse and the existence of a hunted man. Anybody know? Al Capone. Yeah. Al Capone. Al Capone? He saw himself as the abused person. Someday I'm going to have to get a sermon on the problem with the victim mentality. If we go through life seeing ourselves as victims, we cannot grow in the way that we're supposed to grow.

I mean, all of us are victims from Satan. The problem is, all of us have abused people, and all of us have been abused. We've been built ends of that thing. If you've been on both ends of that, you can't live as the victim. Somewhere we grow out of that in our view of life changes. As long as we see ourselves as victims, we can always have this fallback position.

It's not my fault. I'm the abused person here. Where do you see this right in the very beginning, the tendency in human beings? Adam, where are you? Well, I'm hiding. Why? Because I knew I was naked, and I was really ashamed. Who told you that? Her! The woman that you gave me. Her fault and your fault, God.

It's not my fault! Okay, Eve. What about you? It was a snake! It's not my fault. I think I didn't have anybody to blame. It's not my fault. At some point, we have to take responsibility. You know, you and I were born into this world. Satan got ahold of us very early, corrupted us, and we're all messed up. But at some point, we take responsibility for that. At some point, we go to God and say, God, I am a sinner.

I am. It's who I am. I don't want to be this way. I sin. I break your law. I'm not good. I'm not just. I'm not right. And we stop defending ourselves before Him, and we admit what we really are. Let's go to 1 John 1 as our last scripture here. 1 John 1. This is going to bring us right back around to where we started. 1 John 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just. That's very interesting. Because those are two aspects, two qualities of God's righteousness.

Faithfulness and justice. Faithful and just. Oh, no. That means He is going to require my life for my sins. Because that's what justice requires. Unless there's a substitute. Now we're right back to the Passover, aren't we? We're right back around where we started this sermon. Passover in Days of Unleavened Bread.

There is a justice required. God's righteousness requires it for you and me. Justice must be served. But He is faithful to carry out His end of the agreement, His end of the covenant. In His covenants, in His promises throughout the scripture, He says, I will give you a substitute. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we have made Him a liar. And His word is not in us, Chapter 2. John says, my little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. He says, this should motivate us not to sin. I don't understand how people read this and then come to the conclusion, well, God's just going to put His righteousness to me and whatever I do doesn't matter.

John sure didn't see it that way. John said, this motivates us not to sin. But if anyone does sin, when we do stumble, when we do fall, we have an advocate, someone who defends you before God, before the seed of justice. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. So now we're talking about Christ being right and just and faithful. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

As we prepare for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Passover Days of Unleavened Bread, contemplate the spiritual leavening in your life, but not just the obvious leavening, but the subtle leavening of self-righteousness. Because we all fight this. It's part of our human nature. But to stand before the Almighty God is to stand before total righteousness. And it is realized, unless He gives righteousness to us, unless He teaches us, unless He guides us, unless we receive His Spirit, unless we receive His propitiation, unless we receive all that, we're doomed! We have no hope. We can't make ourselves clean without His help. We surely can't forgive ourselves. And we can't fulfill the justice of His law without dying. So when we look at ourselves, we say, well, take a hard look.

Have you ever suffered from I don't have any bug syndrome? I'm okay, you're okay syndrome. Rabbi-Rabbi syndrome is not my fault syndrome. Passover reminds us that without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, there's no hope. Only through His sacrifice and His resurrection, and the result that God has sent His Spirit into us to complete His work in us, as we submit to that work, that we can actually become cleansed from our sins. And not only cleansed, but when we stand before God in that state, Christ as our Passover, have received His Spirit, cleansed from our sins, that we actually become recipients of the righteousness of God.